During the past few weeks, I have bene leaning on my Apple Watch as my primary device. It has become the answer to most of my distraction problems, and in many ways the most important in my life. Taking a step back and thinking about the use case for all of my devices has proven to be an interesting experiment, and I have come to some differing conclusions than those I may have done before. I truly now think it’s time to break away from the smartphone and introduce more add on devices.

When I am sat at my desk, much of the time I do not know where my phone is. Not because I am so pretentious I just don’t care, but because I don’t need to. Apple has done a remarkable job of making all of their products so integrated that often my phone goes missing for hours. Anyone texts me it pings my Mac (iMessage or not) when they call I can answer hands free or use AirPods for a little more privacy, meaning I never miss a thing.

This, of course, happens with an iPad just as seamlessly, with everything synced across devices for good measure. This isn’t perfect, but the vast majority of the time, I frequently wonder why I have a phone at all. Alas, Apple place so much emesis on the iPhone that I couldn’t do this without it acting as a relay. They seem dead set on never freeing the Apple Watch from its grasp, and perhaps they should reconsider.

Granted, to live a completely free life it may take more investment. However, I would much prefer for another device to take over as the fulcrum and make everything else add-ons. The most obvious of these would be the Apple Watch. Picture a world where this is your ‘main’ device. You can pick up and put down devices as you choose, and they can action anything you need.

Using your iPad, it becomes just like a big phone. Have a smartphone with you, then it works as it does now but when you don’t need it, you just turn it off. Require a smaller phone for the weekend away? This becomes much less hassle if your phone is a satellite device for something else.

This is without thinking about the rest of the add-on devices that could be possible, or simply work better once it breaks free. Mixed reality and potentially virtual reality devices will be launched by Apple soon, so I could envision a world where all I require is my Apple Watch and some glasses. It makes perfect sense for the ability for my Apple Watch to be everything because it’s always strapped to my wrist. It's time for it to break free and become a device in its own right and work better with everything else.